reflection!

Reflections in a Churchyard.

Can any thing more be wanting to inspire thee with the most serious purposes, and most devout resolves, than the certainty of death, the assurance of judgment, the knowledge of immortality!

And after death be judged! Tell me no more of the pangs of death, and the torment of corporeal sufferance.-What, what is this, and all the evils of life's contracted span to the things which follow after? This it is, which makes death truly formidable, which should awaken every solemn reflection, and stimulate every rational endeavour?

To be judged! to be sentenced by an irreversible decree, to an allotment eternal and unchangeable; an allotment of consummate felicity, or consummate distress.

Oh Immortality, how much doth the thought of thee debase in their value every earthly enjoyment, every earthly pursuit and possession-and shew man to himself in a point of view which amply discovers his true business on earth, which amply discovers the true dignity of his nature, and forcibly reproves his wretched attachment to sublunary things!

Reflections in a Churchyard.

And methinks, as if a voice were speaking from yonder grave-I hear a solemn whisper to my soul!

"Every grave proclaims thy own mortality! Child of the dust, be humble and grow wise! A few days since, like thee, I flourished in the fair field of the earthly world; a few days since I was cut down like a flower, and my body lies withering in this comfortless bed! Regardless of God, and inattentive to duty, I passed gaily along, and thought no storm would ever overcloud my head!

In a moment the unexpected tempest arose. I sunk, and was lost. Go thy way, and forget not thyself: remember that to-day thou hast life in thy power; to-morrow, perhaps, thou mayest lie a breathless corpse! Estimate from thence the value, poor and small, of all things beneath the sun;-and forget not that death and eternity are, by an indissoluble band, united! If thou darest to die, and unprepared meet thy God, who can enough deplore thy misery, most wretched of beings! Everlasting anguish, remorse, and punishment, assuredly await thee.—But if bearing futurity in mind, thou art so blest as to live in conformity to the law of thy nature, and the

Reflections in a Churchyard.

gospel of thy God-the Saviour of mankind hath opened the golden doors of perennial bliss for thee, and eternal delight, from the full river of God's inexhausted love, remains to reward thy faithful services.

"Immortal be wise, remember judgment, and learn to die."

Lost in the deep reflection, I was awakened from it by the intelligence of the approach of my departed friend's funeral.

1

Melancholy Funeral.

CHAPTER II.

Boast not thyself of to-morrow; for thou knowest not what

a day may bring forth.

Defer not until death to be justified!

PROV. XXVII. 1.

ECCLES. XVIII. 22.

O Death, how bitter is the remembrance of thee to a man that liveth at rest in his possession; unto the man that has nothing to vex him, and that hath prosperity in all things: yea unto him that is yet able to receive meat!

ECCLES. XLI. 1.

THE horses, nodding their sable plumes, advanced with solemn pace; and the slow-moving wheels of the melancholy hearse seemed to keep time with the deep-toned bell; expressive of the silent sorrow, now and then interrupted with a groan of distress, which reigned in the mournful coaches that followed.

Melancholy Funeral.

They stopt-and ah, my friend, what all this labour, and all this difficulty to drag thy body in its last narrow dwelling, from the confinement of the hearse, and to bear it along the churchyard to its last narrow cell in the church! Ah, where is thy former activity-thy wonted sprightliness and vigour! Thou who trod over the threshold with such lively strength, and brushed away the dew of the morning with stout and nimble vivacity;-have thy feet too forgotten to do their office?—And must thy fellow-mortals toil beneath the load of thy clayey corpse, to bear thee from the sight and sense of the survivors ?

Oh Death, thou sovereign cure of human pride! to what a state, impartial in thine attack, dost thou reduce as well the noblest and the fairest, the greatest and the best, as the meanest and most worthless of mankind! Though our friends lovely as the bloom

be dear to us as a right eye; of the morning; powerful as the sceptered monarch of the east; thou not only degradest them from the elevated height, but renderest obnoxious to the view; and inaccessible to the tender embrace of the last lingering, faithful, unshaken adherent! Let corruption cease to be vain; let